Through the Garden Gate

Memories seduce me as I tread upon the moist ground that weaves through these Florida flowers. Music is on my mind, a melody upon my lips, entrancing and requiring an emotion I’m not quite sure of.

The feeling plays over me like a wave, shimmering tears from the corners of my eyes. My Grandmother is gone. One can never be quite prepared, no matter how many years pass. She was ninety-eight. Passed through Death’s door during the Solar eclipse, at a time between the changing to full spring.

Bittersweet is the only word to describe it. I’d already begun to miss her, as if who she was had already died under the onslaught of dementia several years ago. That time was the time I had already begun to let go.

This final end to biological life is the last puzzle piece. Of course I miss her, but I have missed her, and of course I grieve, but I have grieved.

But I also celebrate.

We are so fleeting, so infinitesimal. Our lives are but fine silk threads that can be snapped, cut off, in a split moment. Even though Death is merely another part of the journey, the conscious life we are given is such a fragile thing. Memories are reminders of this very fact.

The flowers greet me in happy colors, yellows and blues and purples, nodding soft petals and bright foliage in my direction as I step through some of the overgrowth of the trees and shrub of the butterfly garden. Insects of dreamy hues flit from blossom to blossom, reminding me to still myself.

Meditation beneath the grapefruit tree, surrounded by healing plants, listening to my breath, the breeze, the life. Memories.

We are conduits to our Ancestors. We are conduits to our descendants. But we only have moments. Only moments to live and love and die.

So I still myself. I plop right down and let everything else fade into the distance as I listen to my self, my life force, my mortality. I close my eyes and just be.

And I emerge refreshed, renewed, awakened and ready for my tasks and responsibilities. In the clean air and morning light, when the dew sparkles as brightly upon the fresh growth of ideas as it does on the Florida primrose at my feet, goals are clearer. Purpose is crystal.

I have my Grandmother to thank for such discipline. To use what she taught me about my sense of self to seek inward reflection and assessment. To look at each beautiful thing and to be thankful to be alive and breathing.

And to always use our fleeting time wisely, in all things pursuing a way to better myself and those around me.